e.' Thereupon his imagination swelled, and he saw his evil will
enthroned, and the hopes of men beneath his heel, crying, 'And the more I
crush them the thicker they crowd, for the Identical compelleth their
very souls to adore in spite of distaste.'

Then said I, 'Tell me, O Genie! is the Identical subservient to me in
another head save thine?'

He answered, 'Nay I in another head 'tis a counteraction to the power of
the Ring, the Ring powerless over it.'

And I said, 'Must it live in a head, the Identical?'

Cried he, 'Woe to what else holdeth it!'

I whispered in his hairy pointed red ear, 'Sleep! sleep!' and lulled him
with a song, and he slept, being weary with my commissioning. Then I bade
Feshnavat, my father, fetch me one of my books of magic, and read in it
of the discovery of the Identical by means of the Ring; and I took the
Ring and hung it on a hair of my own head over the head of the Genie, and
saw one of the thin lengths begin to twist and dart and writhe, and shift
lustres as a creature in anguish. So I put the Ring on my forefinger, and
turned the hair round and round it, and tugged. Lo, with a noise that
stunned me, the hair came out! O my betrothed, what shrieks and roars
were those: with which the Genie awoke, finding himself bare of the
Identical! Oolb heard them, and the sea foamed like the mouth of madness,
as the Genie sped thunder-like over it, following me in mid-air. Such a
flight was that! Now, I found it not possible to hold the Identical, for
it twisted and stung, and was nigh slipping from me while I flew. I saw
white on a corner of the Desert, a city, and I descended on it by the
shop of a clothier that sat quietly by his goods and stuffs, thinking of
fate less than of kabobs and stews and rare seasonings. That city hath
now his name. Wullahy, had I not then sown in his head that hair which he
weareth yet, how had I escaped Karaz, and met thee? Wondrous are the
decrees of Providence! Praise be to Allah for them! So the Genie, when he
found himself baffled by me, and Shagpat with the mighty hair in his
head, the Identical, he yelled, and fetched Shagpat a slap that sent him
into the middle of the street; but Kadza screamed after him, and there
was immediately such lamentation in the city about Shagpat, and such
tearing of hair about him, that I perceived at once the virtue that was
in the Identical. As for Karaz, finding his claim as possessor of the
Identical no more valid, he vanishe